The Brief – Burn the bedbugs, France begs

By Théo Bourgery-Gonse | @Theo_BGonse

An alleged spike in the number of bedbug infections across France has unexpectedly thrown the country into a political frenzy, making it the top priority for the government and opposition alike.

“Must we wait for your office to be infested before you finally react?” Mathilde Panot, a far-left lawmaker, asked Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne in Parliament, her hand squeezed around a small vial with bedbugs inside.

Panot’s theatrical take – with props – should not be taken lightly: Bedbugs have, quite literally, become the talk of the town.

Don’t take this as some random media outrage: It goes to the inherent sense of cleanliness of the French. Bedbugs are not just a nuisance, they are an affront.

In a way, it’s history catching up with us. Bedbugs have always been around because they like what humans like: calm and dark places, such as a bedroom, where they can lay their eggs at their own pace without fear of predators.

Eventually, bedbugs disappeared in the second half of the 1900s, in part due to the heavy-handed post-war use of DDT – Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane – spray to clean up homes, which nearly eradicated them all.

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EU countries have asked the bloc’s diplomatic service EEAS to come up with punitive ‘options’ should the situation between Armenia and Azerbaijan deteriorate, but so far disagree about their intensity, Euractiv has learnt.

As EU leaders gather in Granada today, their most publicised agenda item is the situation with Armenia after Azerbaijan took control of Nagorno-Karabakh following a 24-hour military operation that ended almost four decades of tension.

Russia has signed a deal for a permanent naval base on the Black Sea coast of the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia, its leader was quoted as saying by the Izvestiya newspaper on Thursday, a day after he met President Vladimir Putin.

The European Union’s new climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, made written commitments on Wednesday to defend a 90% cut in net greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, a move that financial analysts say will send EU carbon prices above the €400 mark.

Lawmakers in Brussels have agreed on the dates by which heat pumps and electrical equipment must ditch fluorinated gases and switch to more climate-friendly alternatives.

EU countries are looking to break the impasse on plans to reform Europe’s electricity market following an almost four-month deadlock, with the aim to approve their negotiating position on 17 October.

The EU can no longer be content to legislate and regulate, or else consumers will be the ones bearing the cost of the green transition, climate scientist Corinne Le Quéré told Euractiv, arguing in favour of “a clear financing plan” agreed with EU member states.

Current wind energy deployment rates in European countries are not aligned with the EU’s climate change targets, according to a report published on Thursday by the nature conservation NGO WWF.

Food Safety and Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides defended the key points of the EU executive’s proposal to re-approve the contentious herbicide glyphosate, signalling that the expected tweaks to the text at this point are likely to be relatively minor.

• Informal summit of EU leaders in Granada, Spain on Friday.
• Budget Commissioner Johannes Hahn delivers keynote speech at European Youth Forum Neumarkt.

Views are the author’s

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic/Alice Taylor]